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How to Turn a PlayStation 3 Into a Linux PC

Posted by timothy on from the sleek-box-of-ubuntu dept.

MahariBalzitch writes "Popular Mechanics shows step by step guide on how to install Ubuntu Linux on a PlayStation 3 and still keep the PS3 gaming functionality. Now I just need to get my hands on a PS3." Not bad specs for the price, either, since Blu-Ray players still aren't cheap. And though the article calls the procedure "somewhat complicated," it's a lot simpler than was installing Linux from floppies not so many years ago.

18 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. On what planet is this 'news'? by iapetus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a documented feature of the system and has been since day one. I installed Linux shortly after the UK launch, and it really isn't anything to write home about - no support for hardware accelerated 3D, and a processor that really isn't designed for general-purpose computing. Novelty value for a couple of minutes, sure, then back to gaming on the PS3 and Linuxing on a real PC.

    --
    ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
    Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
    1. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by philipgar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's actually a pretty smart way for Sony to prevent people from hacking the PS3. I'm sure part of this was at IBMs request, as IBM wants the CELL to be useful for other purposes than just gaming. By allowing Linux to easily run in a limited form, it means that people can play with the machine in Linux, but don't really have control over it. However, it also means fewer people are willing to spend the time required to hack the box and make a real linux media center machine out of it. I wouldn't doubt if this would already be available for the PS3, if not for the fact that it is so easy to get Linux installed on the device already.

      As it stands, researchers already have access to play around with the Cell SPEs, and can do enough that there's no need to break it for their own needs. The general hobbyist who wants all the other stuff tend to not have the knowledge and resources to break in, and install linux, and thus no one has done it. Not a bad tradeoff, the research community gets to use the PS3 to play with Cell processors (helping IBMs goal of encouraging Cell development), and the hacking community has far fewer resources available to break the system, and less demand for it.

      Phil

    2. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Informative? You've been modded +4 Informative at this point, but a fair chunk of what you say is outright wrong. To whit:
      1) Wifi access is not only available but works out-of-the-box with Yellow Dog Linux
      2) Bluetooth access works fine and with only a tiny amount of work the Sixaxis controllers work as Bluetooth joysticks, and get picked up and used for stuff like Dosbox (old two-player dos games with Sixaxis joysticks sitting on the couch with your 47" LCD, anyone?)
      3) Full access to the six special coprocessors, only access to the RSX chip is restricted

      It runs fine at 720p and I have had Age of Empires II running just fine via the wireless connection to a Win98 harddrive image loaded up with qemu.

      It's great.

    3. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There is an X/MPlayer video driver that plays 1080p HD video on the Cell's SPUs quite nicely, while the Cell's PPC core runs the Linux kernel without distraction.

      To use PPC apps, you don't have to "compile them yourself". This is Ubuntu. All you do is apt-get install them from a source package.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    4. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by Bootarn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here at Uppsala University, Sweden, we have a PS3 that is currently computing molecular dynamics. I'd say the PS3 is not perfect for desktop computing, since most desktop software is poorly written in respect to parallelisation. It is, however, quite good for scientific applications which are designed to run on a cluster. (GROMACS for instance)

    5. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by robosmurf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No, it really isn't.

      The cell does have a PowerPC core in it, but it's not the same as the PowerPC that was used in Macs. It's considerably stripped down, and as such isn't that great for general-purpose computing.

      I have been considering putting linux on my PS3, but only to tinker with the SPE cores. It's otherwise a really poor linux system.

    6. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's actually a pretty smart way for Sony to prevent people from hacking the PS3. I'm sure part of this was at IBMs request, as IBM wants the CELL to be useful for other purposes than just gaming.

      I don't think so. I think it's all Sony. They just don't want you doing other things with their baby while you could be playing games, and buying games, and providing Sony with licensing revenue.

      The PS3 is dramatically cheaper than any other Cell platform, so it's still interesting to "researchers", just not the ones at the best-funded and thus best-equipped universities. But out in the real world, without an ivory tower up one's ass, cheap supplies still spur private research.

      The point is that the PS3 is an inherently limited platform and without graphics access it's just a strange-architecture PC with horribly slow graphics and 256MB RAM, which is just barely adequate for websurfing but which for example is really not enough to run OO.o smoothly, let alone Inkscape. Arguably the Xbox is more useful - neither the PS3 running Linux nor the Xbox will help anyone view HD video, but the XDK for the Xbox is running around and if you're willing to write or port Windows software you can put whatever you want on it... which is how we run XBMC.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:On what planet is this 'news'? by Hal+The+Computer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just because it doesn't play your files doesn't mean it doesn't work. It plays something like 95% of the DivX/MPEG-4/Xvid files I throw at it.

      The reason your h264 files won't play is because they use the wrong container format. You can easily convert them in less than 60 seconds. (Try mkv2vob)

      --

      int main(void){int x=01232;while(malloc(x));return x;}
  2. "Somewhat Complicated" by cp.tar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And though the article calls the procedure "somewhat complicated," it's a lot simpler than was installing Linux from floppies not so many years ago.

    In some respects, it seems exactly like installing Linux from floppies.
    In the olden days, you swapped the boot and root floppies; here you swap the hard drives, which indeed is somewhat complicated, as in "I wouldn't trust my grandmother to do it right" (not grandfather, though!).

    As for the rest... OK, I am one of the few people in the universe who actually read documentation, but nevertheless... a page-long manual, illustrations included, makes the procedure somewhat complicated?
    Indeed, Linux has come a long way if not being able to simply pop a CD and install on anything, incuding a toaster, makes the install procedure "somewhat complicated".

    --
    Ignore this signature. By order.
  3. Not bad specs, with one exception: by nobodyman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You only have 256mb RAM. The other 256 is video RAM, and Sony prohibits direct access to it. Unfortunately that means no hardware accelerated graphics either. Kindof a shame, but I imagine it's still neat to play around with, and I doubt you'll find a cheaper Cell dev platform.

    On the 360 side, hobbyist developers have a different set of trade-offs. You can write games C# using XNA Game Studio, 512mb shared memory, and even get hardware acceleration (some of the demos are quite impressive). On the flipside, there's a $100/year membership and fat chance of ever running linux (in any official capacity at least)

    1. Re:Not bad specs, with one exception: by frieko · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually with a bit of coaxing you can get Linux onto the 360.

      It's kind of ironic (suspicious?) that you can pirate 360 games way easier then you can run homebrew/Linux on it.

    2. Re:Not bad specs, with one exception: by Capitalist+Piggy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      *Sigh*
      Go read this article on GamaSutra real quick.


      Slashdot isn't the place for any positive information about the 360. It's rather silly, because for any up-and-coming game coder, it's probably not a wise one to ignore or spit at.

  4. PS3 Linux Media Center by manekineko2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of my dreams as soon as the PS3 was released was to install Linux on it and turn it into a media center hub without any of the DRM restrictions of pre-packaged solutions.

    I currently use an Xbox 1 with Xbox Media Center installed, but it's starting to get long in the tooth since it doesn't support HD resolutions.

    Although the GPU is restricted from access when in Linux , the CPU on the PS3 is plenty strong still as I understand it. Is there a way to install Linux easily on a PS3 so that it can be an easy to use media center comparable to XBMC?

    I've seen reference to the fact that such a thing is possible, but is there an ISO I can just burn or install and have it work? If not, why not?

    1. Re:PS3 Linux Media Center by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Alternatively you can just use a program like TVersity to transcode and use the PS3's media device connectivity (or media player 11, if all your files are in the right format)

  5. one of the most energy inefficient "PC's"... by marcushnk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The PS3 is an absolute power hog...
    http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=106346&catId=100245&tid=100008&p=5&title=Computers'+energy+costs

    --
    "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
  6. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The best PS3 mod would be to use

    LINUX MCE

    http://www.linuxmce.org

    Total media center, game center, home automation and security center, asterisk telephone conole, everything... including LTSP built-in (might be able to play games in other rooms of the house too)?

    Hey - Linux MCE is GPL software... so, if anyone wanted to do a custom distro of LINUX MCE, this PS3 platform might be a winner.

  7. Gromacs on a cell? by Smeagel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since when is gromacs optimized for the cell? Gromacs sucks pretty bad at scaling as it is, but I don't think it'd even use the SPU's (from what I can tell it hasn't been optimized for the cell) - meaning you're basically running it on the processor of a 5 year old mac. Now if you optimized it for a cell...then this thing would be blazing.

  8. Re:With ease by kesuki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "(especially since gromacs probably has tons of x86 optimizations in it) than a PS3 would."

    http://www.gromacs.org/content/view/25/

    I wouldn't bank on that, it gets almost Double the processing done on a g5 with a slower clock than a high end p-4. you might have wanted to look into that before you put your foot in your mouth. according to wikipedia the SPE in the ps3 is clocked to 3.2 ghz.

    "Linux Pentium 4 1 Intel 8 3000 1024 10176 2280 1353 164 3045 357 0.95"

    "Apple G5 PPC 970 1 IBM 2500 512 15309 4177 2213 175 5069 544 1.74"

    --
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html